My project is called ‘News Stories Through Joiners’. This is what I have chosen to do for my final major project. In this project I have combined a variety of current news stories and topics with the photography technique of joiners. The reason that I have chosen to use these news stories is because I wanted to choose something that was current and that was in the news currently, at the time that I did my shoot these news stories were being covered in the news. The news stories that I chose were terrorism (Manchester Bombings) and also the General Election. In my Election Picture I used pictures of party leaders and also the parties logos to show the variety in different opinions from each of the parties, then I used the colour change technique to highlight the different opinions and show what truly matters within the vote. For my terrorism image I created a grid style joiner of the One Love Manchester Concert. This concert took place in memory of those that were killed at the bombing. I used my image to help represent the message that ‘Love Always Wins’ as this is a key message that was represented throughout the different news stories broadcasted. Above you will find my two final images, on the top you will find my terrorism image. The reason that this is printed smaller is because there were restrictions to my print sizes for this image, as I didn’t want it to be stretched out as I felt that it would ruin the image and its proportions. Below it you will find my General Election image, the reason that I have put this image underneath is because it is bigger and I felt that it would look better underneath rather than on top. The reason that this image is bigger is because when I went to print my images I found it hard to get the proportions right as the image is quite wide. I made it bigger so I could fit it all in. This piece of work is a culmination of two years of photography at Harlow College. After I have completed my course I am hoping to do an apprenticeship within photography and continue my photography work outside college. I hope that you enjoy my work, as much as I do, I am very happy that it is all now completed and that I am able to present it to you.

For our final major project we were given an open brief to what we wanted to do. This meant that over the two years of photography that we have done at college we could choose to use or do something that we had learnt during the course. We were also given the choice to choose something that we hadn’t used before and to teach our self in effect a new skill, this would therefor show our initiative in photography and it would also show that we have decided to try something new rather than do something we have done before. However even though it was an open brief there were still some guidelines we had to follow in order to make sure that we passed the unit. The guidelines that we had to follow for this unit were like any other project that had guidelines also. The things that we were asked to do in order to pass were things like, artist research, experimental shoots, shoot plans, bibliography, and reflective diaries and also shoot evaluations. These things that we were asked to were also key things that we did in other projects in order to pass but because this was our final major project we had to take these things into a lot more consideration and also write about them in a lot more detail.

To start off this project I started by completing my secondary research and planning out my initial ideas. For this I wrote a post about me and about what my goals are for this project and how I see myself as a photographer. The reason that that I did this was to give me a base for my post and also it was on one of the guide sheets that we had to use, so I also used this as something to help me too. I then spoke about my secondary research and went through and analysed some images from our visit to the David Hockney Exhibition. This post was the first piece of research that I had done for this project and when I was planning shoots and writing out my other shoots and also writing my proposal I went through this and referred back to help me. I think overall this piece of research was really helpful for me and it really contributed towards my project. I think this because the initial idea that I used for this post I actually ended up taking and changing it slightly for it to then become my final idea. Along with just writing out my initial idea I also made a mood board to go along with this and I think that this really helped me visually see what I was going to try and do for this project rather than just reading it from a piece of paper. Because of the success from this first mood board that I made at the start of this project and because of how much it helped me I decided to make mood boards throughout my project as this really helped me to visually plan out my ideas and see what my ideas would actually look like. The reason that I chose to do this other than just writing it down is because sometimes when I just write something down I don’t feel that inspired and I find it hard to imagine what my work will look like or what my idea is but as I already said this mood board making throughout the project really helped me to do this. I think that this post and piece of research was a good way to start this project and was a good base for me to start from.

After I had finished this post I started thinking about my idea in a lot more detail and what I actually wanted to do. I didn’t publish any of these thoughts on my site as I didn’t think that they were clear enough or there wasn’t enough of them for my to be able to make a full post from it. However during this thought process I looked back at my initial ideas which was joiners using landscapes and thought about it and how I would do this, I thought about it and decided that I didn’t want to do landscape photography for this project and also to use in my final joiners as in previous projects during this course I had done a lot of landscape photography and for this final project I wanted to try and do something new and different. After looking at different ideas of what I could do for my final major project I decided to create a joiner that would represent news stories. I think that taking some time to think about my idea before going any further in this project really helped me and I really benefitted from this as it meant that I actually thought about what I was going to do and what it was going to look like. I think that if I went along with my initial idea I wouldn’t have been very happy with my project overall and I feel that I wouldn’t have been challenging myself enough for this project and initially when I started this project I really wanted it to be something that would challenge me and push me to get good results. The reason that I wanted to do this is because I knew how much was at stake in this project and I knew like other projects it wasn’t just a pass or a fail it was also a pass, merit, distinction or fail and I wanted to try my best to get a pass or better and I knew that it wouldn’t be as easy as it would have been in other projects. In other projects that I had done all I needed to was follow the checklist and do the set tasks and I knew that I would pass, however in this project there is a lot more to do and to think about in order to get a higher grade, potentially better than a pass.

After I had thought about my ideas and what I could do for my project I had a final idea in my head of what I wanted to do and I was very confident with my idea and knew what had to be done in order to complete my project. In order for this project to run smoothly I decided to write an action plan that would help me week by week to get my through this project. The way that I decided to this was to create a table in word and write down the number and date of each week at the edge and I started the dates at the very start of this project so that I could go from start to finish and not miss anything out. In the main part of my action plan I wrote about different things that I would do during that week and how I would complete them. I also included the different resources that I would need to use in order to complete that task. Throughout this action plan and when creating it I referred back to the checklist of tasks that I knew had to be completed for the project and I made sure that I included these throughout my plan to show that I was getting them done. I also tried to schedule in stages where I would sit and go through the work that I have already completed and check to see if it was finished and if there was anything that I would need to complete or change in order to improve it. I think that it was good that I did this as it meant that I wouldn’t have to leave all my proofreading to the end and it wouldn’t leave me worrying about things not being checked before final submission. I found making an action plan, as I was able to check it once or twice a week during college and it gave me the chance to check what I needed to be doing each week and the different weeks on my action plan were almost like my pointers for the start of each week. I feel that if I didn’t make an action plan for this project then I would have found the tasks that I needed to complete for this project a bit all over the place and I wouldn’t have had an strict guidelines in place to complete any tasks. I feel that this would have meant that a lot of my tasks wouldn’t have been completed on time and some not even at all. I also found it very helpful using the project checklist whilst writing my action plan as this meant that I could schedule in a time for each of the different tasks to get done and I knew that I hadn’t forgotten to do anything for this project. Overall I found the action plan very helpful and I feel that I used it to its full advantage by making sure to check it each week and also checking off the different tasks that I had completed as and when I had done them.

Once I had gone through my different tasks and completed my action plan it was then time to write my proposal. I feel that in any project a proposal is like the main part for the project and is part of the bulk of work that you have to do. I completed my proposal and before I did this I made sure to make a list of the different things that I needed to include in order to make sure I had covered every ground of my work and talked about everything that I felt needed to be included. On this list of topics where things like, my idea, my research, time frames and also my experiments, looking back at my proposal now I feel that I managed to cover each of these points very well and spoke about them in detail. I think that the proposal that I completed was very good and because of the different pointers that I used I managed to clearly explain my idea and get across the points that I wanted really well. I made sure during the writing of my proposal that I was speaking clearly and that all of my work made sense, because my proposal was so long I didn’t want to have wrote it all out and then have to go back through the whole thing and check it for mistakes, to avoid this I made sure to go through each of my paragraphs in my proposal once they were finished and during this time I also checked for any spelling and grammar errors in my work as this would save time during the stages where I would be going through my work and checking for any spelling and grammar errors as I didn’t want these points in my work to take up too much time. I am very happy with the way that my proposal turned out and I think that it was a very good and well-structured proposal. Compared to my other proposals which I have done before I am very happy with the way this one turned out as I feel that I spent a lot more time working on this one and I think that it is a lot better than ones I have done before in previous projects. I found my proposal really helpful throughout this project as I feel that it guided me to then go onto my research and also my experimental shoots.

After completing my proposal I then moved onto my visual artist research. For this element I decided to make some mood boards based on my artists work and this would also show the variety of their work and not only did I include there work I included what there work meant to me and what I felt it represented. I created a total of four mood boards and this was one for each of my different artists. The reason that I did was to show he visual elements of there work and to give me a visual guide to each of my different artists and also help me in what my work could look like and what I could be creating. I found that making these mood boards was very helpful as it helped me to add a visual element to my work, a visual element to my work amongst all of the writing that I was already doing. I think that making these mood boards also helped me to show that I am understand the artists work and I can identify their work and what it is like. I also created some mind maps alongside this in a separate post which also represented the different artists work and also gave me a chance to analyse it in more brief points compare to a full analysis.

The next piece of work that I had to complete was technical artist research, for this piece of research I wanted to pick and artist that had worked with joiners and who had completed joiners that were effective and also that I liked myself, the reason that I wanted to like them is because if I didn’t I don’t think that I would have enjoyed analysing them and also researching the artist as much as I would if I did like them. The artist that I chose for this piece of research was Christian Marclay. In amongst this research I also talked about joiners including information about what they are, which different artist make them and also what they can be used for in photography. I found it really helpful learning about this as it meant that I was learning about joiners my self, as it was something that I had never used or focused on in photography before. I think that writing a post about joiners not only helped me to learn about them but it also showed my understanding of information, enough that I was able to write my own post about it. Alongside this information I then went on to talking about Christian Marclay and also David Hockney. These two artists have both used joiners and use them in very different ways, throughout my post I talked about how they are both different and how there work affects their audiences and also the purpose and the message that it has. To do this I analysed three of their images and talked about how they were created and how each of them are different. The main difference I found in the two artists work if that one artists work is mainly based on nature and landscapes and also their work looks a lot like painting rather than photographers, however the other artists work is based on music and music covers from the 70’s and 80’s, he uses his joiners to create new covers and joiners different pieces of the covers together to create a variety of different results. I think that this piece of research and the whole post in particular really helped me and I have found it really beneficial, not only did I learn more about joiners and how they work and also what they are used for, but I also learnt about joiner artists and I got a chance to make a start on my technical artist research and also analyse some joiners. I really enjoyed analysing their work as I got to take it apart on my own way and find a variety of different key elements that I could also use in my work to make it a lot stronger.

I then went on to completing my research but for my conceptual artists. The two conceptual artists that I chose to analyse for this project were, David Burnett and Tyler Hicks. The reason that I chose these two artists is because they have shot things that have been in the news and are known as photojournalists. I chose photojournalists as they are always shooting things in the news and in my joiners I wanted to focus on news stories so I thought that these two artists would be really good to focus on as a part of my conceptual research. Like my previous research I analysed some of their images and picked out different things that I could use from their images in my work. With my Tyler Hicks research I incorporated this into one of my first experimental shoot plans. The reason that I did this is so that I had my shoot plan and the idea behind it backed up by research. I think that this research helped me as it showed me the meaning behind photojournalism and I also learnt more about artists that use it like Tyler Hicks. I think that this research that I did was good and I really understood it, I showed my understanding for this piece of work by concluding the research with a shoot plan based on the research I had done and the images that I had used in the post. I think that it was good that I was able to do this as it showed that I fully understood the meaning of this artists work and was confident enough in this to recreate something like this myself. Overall I am very happy with this piece of research as I feel that it helped me to learn more about photojournalism and also news stories. I completed my second piece of conceptual research in a different post and for this piece of research I focused on a different photojournalist which was David Burnett, much like in my Tyler Hicks post I analysed some of his images and in this post I also included a comparison between the two artists work. I think that the two artists work are very different in multiple ways and I made sure to include this in my work. I also visually helped these comparisons by adding in picture to support my different points. I think that the fact that I was able to compare the two artists work showed that I really understood their work and that I understood it enough to be able to compare the two artists and their work. I think that if I hadn’t analysed all of their images or gone into depth in both their pieces of research then I feel that I wouldn’t have been confident enough to compare their work so I feel happy that I managed to achieve this. Overall, I feel that this piece of conceptual research was really good and also helped me not only towards passing the project but also to develop me knowledge in news stories and photojournalism much like my Tyler Hicks research.

After I had completed all of my artist research I then went on to showing my understanding of their work and showing the different things that the artists work represents and to do this I completed my artist responses and image based solutions. The reason that we completed this piece of work was to show that we understood the work of the artist and also that we were able to identify the work of a different photographer and relate it to the ones that we had researched. The first part that I completed was my artist responses, to do this I focused on each one of my artists and created a mood board for each of them that shows not only pieces of their work but also shows the different things related to their work and what we feel inspires them and what their work means to them and to us. I completed one for each of artists and I think that they came out very well. I tried to include as much as I could without the images being too small and I think that I managed to achieve this. I think that these artists’ responses really helped me as I managed to represent their work, which I found helpful and understandable, and also I hope the audience find helpful and understandable also. After I completed this I then went on to completing my images based solutions. For this piece of work I found it very different to making mood boards. In this post we were required to find a piece of work that would represent each of the different artists that I had researched. The images that we had used for this post couldn’t be the work of the artist, it had to be from another photographer or it could be an image that we created ourselves, I found this task quite easy and I didn’t have much trouble trying to find anything for each of the artists. Once I had found all of my images I then analysed them and spoke about how I thought they related to the photographer and how I thought they were relevant. I think that this post really helped me to see how other artists can create the same sort of work as another photographer but how their work can look similar. I really like the work that I found. All of the images that I found for this piece I found on the internet and I didn’t take any of my own images, the reason that I chose to do this was because in a lot of my experimental shoots I had planned to do a shoot based on that artist and their work so I wanted to save my images like that for those shoots. Overall I feel that this task helped me to represent my understanding of my artists work also and I could also represent it creatively and also speak about it and analyse it at the same time.

After I had done this task I then went on to add in a little bit of extra research that would help me move onto my experimental shoots. As I was working on news stories for my final shoot I thought that it would help if I did some research into them. I decided to keep this research quite basic and I chose not to go into to much detail. The reason that I chose to do this was because in all of my shoot plans I wanted to include some form of research in them and I wanted to save the detailed research for these posts. For this part of my research I decided just to do some mind maps and mood boards as I felt that this would still help me with my research but it would also give me the opportunity to include more detailed research into my shoot plans. The news stories that I used for this piece of research were

The General Election U.K

Murder Violence (Police Crime Related News Stories)

Terrorism&Isis

Brexit

American Government And Politics

I found this part of my research very helpful and I managed to briefly visually represent my idea which was good as it meant that could use this research to help me to set up different shots if I needed them and also to help me to decided which news stories I wanted to use in my work.

After I had completed this I started to work on my experimental shoots. In total I created eight experimental shoots. My original target for this project was 6 experiments but because I wanted my work to challenge me and I wanted to try and get more than a pass in my work I wanted to aim to do eight experiments. Four of these were conceptual shoots and the other four technical. The first shoot that I completed was conceptual. For this shoot I decided to focus on a news story and the news story that I decided to focus on was murder and violence. The reason that I chose this news story was because I had researched Tyler Hicks as my research for this shoot. When I was analysing his work I discovered that in his work there was a lot of violent scenes and also a lot of people that he had shot who had been murder. After doing this research I went onto doing my shoot. For this shoot I decided to choose a specific story to shoot in order to give my images a lot more context. The story that I chose was The Stephen Laurence Murder. The reason that I chose this story is because I feel that it was a very famous news story at the time and in the news there was a lot of different coverage relating to this. The way that I shot my images was by including different headlines from this news story and also pictures of him and his family. I set them up around the picture of him, which was in the centre to show how much went on in the news after his death. I spoke about this shoot in a lot more detail in my shoot evaluation where I spoke about how I thought it challenged me and what my next steps were. For my second experimental shoot I completed a technical shoot and throughout planning and completing my experiments I alternated them between conceptual and technical to create a pattern. For this shoot I focused on the different formats of joiners and the different ways that you can set them up. The research that I completed for this shoot was research about Christian Marclay as he has a variety of different set-ups in his work. I didn’t really focus much on my news stories for this shoot because I was focusing more on the technical aspects of my work. I then evaluated my shoot where I spoke about my different shots and the ways that I shot my work and also my research. For my third experimental shoot I completed a conceptual shoot where I focused on a new news story, which was American politics. I planned this shoot and conducted it in a similar way to my first news story shoot. The only thing different with this plan was the research. Instead of researching an artist for this shoot I decided to research the news story. I decided to research the topic on general and talk about the different ways that it has been covered in the news and why. For this shoot I decided to focus on the election, which happened last year, I shot my pictures in a way, which showed the difference in opinions between Hilary Clinton and Donald Trump and I think this was something that was represented well through my images. I then moved onto my fourth experimental shoot, which was a technical shoot where I focused on the background of my images. In this shoot I wanted to experiment with different backgrounds for my images and see what they would look like. The research for this shoot came from different artists that I had previously researched and these helped me to choose different backgrounds for my shoot. In this shoot I didn’t focus on my stories as much as I would have like to but I still feel that I got some good images which I went into more detail about in my evaluation for that shoot. For my fifth experimental shoot I completed a technical shoot where I focused on joiner set-ups on Photoshop. This was very similar to my other experimental shoot where I focused on joiner set ups but this time I just used Photoshop. For this shoot I researched David Hockneys Joiners as a lot of his work I knew that I could create most of them on Photoshop. For this hoot I created one final piece as a lot of the experiments took a long time to do and I didn’t want to waste a lot of time on this shoot. I then analysed and evaluated this shoot and the final result that I got. For my sixth experimental shoot I moved back to conceptual shoots where I created images based on Brexit and The UK general election. The reason that I chose these news stories is because they were very popular when I was planning this shoot and I was also very interested in these news stories as well. The research that I completed for this shoot was explaining about each of the different news stories and I found this really helped me as I managed to learn more about the story before I started shooting it. The images that created for these news stories showed the difference in opinions from either side of the story. The final results and the way that I set my images up I spoke about in a lot more detail in my evaluation for this shoot. For my seventh experimental shoot I focused on a technical aspect of my work, which was colour change. Originally I never thought that I would include this in my work but the more I looked at the pieces of work like this and the more I thought about it, the more I wanted to include it in my work. I looked at an artist that uses this technique a lot in their work and the artist that I used was Nico Gooden. I analysed some of his images and I think that it was good that I did this as it meant that it was contributing towards my artist research. For this shoot I decided to focus on opinions as I had done this in other news stories and I really like the results. To do this I set up different opinions within a news story and put the image into black and white, I then put the different opinions back into colour to highlight them. The reasons behind this and also the analysis of my final images can be found in the evaluation for that shoot. For my eighth and final experimental shoot I focused on one final news story, which was terrorism. For this news story I focused on the different headlines and arranged them where you could clearly see them all together. The research that I did for this shoot was by talking about terrorism and how it is represented in the news. You can fund my results for this shot in my evaluation. Overall, I feel that all of my experimental shoots have helped in some way. I have learnt a lot from doing my experimental shoots, I have learnt about different news stories and also how I can represent them through a joiner I have also learnt about them more in terms of knowledge through research. I have also developed a lot of my technical skills and learnt a few new ones too. I found my experimental shoots very challenging as I was always trying to do something different. I also found it hard as some things I had included in the shoots I had never done before so I was still trying o do something new. However I really felt that they helped me to develop my idea within my project and got me to the point where I was able to start planning and completing my final shoot.

Around halfway through the project we were asked to complete a peer review. During this review we had to create a questionnaire asking different questions about our work that we had completed so far. We then asked lots of different people in our class and gathered our results together. I found this peer review very helpful and it definitely helped me to improve my work further as the feedback I got from my work I then went on to analyse it and put the comments and changes into my work.

Throughout this project we have been completing a bibliography, this is something that has been key in any project and I am really happy that I managed to complete it. I think that it is important to complete this in a project as it shows that you’re not committing plagiarism within your work and this is something that I didn’t want to loose marks for in this project. I completed this throughout the project and added to it every time that I needed to and this saved me a lot of time rather than trying to complete it right at the end. Also throughout this project I have been completing reflective diaries where I have been reflecting on my work each day talking about what I have learnt so far, how my idea has changed, what I have completed today and what my next steps are. I found this really interesting to do each day and I think that it is good that I completed this as I can look back on it and see how my project has developed over time.

After all of this work, which I have spoken through, throughout my evaluation, was completed and up to date it was then time to write my final shoot plan. Before I did this I went through all of my experimental work to decide what I could do for my final pieces. In my proposal I had stated that I would create four final images but I then was looking back at my work and decided it would have been a lot better if I just did two final pieces as I wanted to be able to have two final images that I had spent time in and that I was happy with rather than having four images that I had rushed and the not being happy with when it comes to the final result. After looking through all of my previous work I had finally decided that the final two news stories that I wanted to focus on for my shoot were Terrorism and The General Election. The reason that I chose these two news stories was because during my experimental shoots I had really enjoyed taking the pictures for these news stories and I found them really interesting to focus on. Another reason that I chose these news stories is because there had been a lot of coverage on them in the news around the time that I had shot my final images. I think that it was very good that I decided to choose news stories that I was enjoying shooting as I wanted to enjoy taking my final images and I didn’t want to choose something that I wouldn’t enjoy shooting and get bored of it. I think that it is also good that I chose a news story that was currently in the news and not really old as it would mean that my work was very current and up to date and it also meant that it was very easy to get the materials that I needed at the time. After deciding what stories to use for my final images I then needed to decide what I would shoot for them. For the General Election Story I decided to create a story that would show the difference in opinions between all of the parties involved in the election. I then decided to use the colour change technique I had used before in my experimental shoots to be able to highlight the different opinions in each image. I think that this made a really good set up for my image and I felt that during my shoot plan this would give me very good results. Then for my terrorism story I wanted to focus on the story of the Manchester Terror Attack. The reason that I had chosen this for my terrorism image is because I felt that there was so much coverage of this story at the time of the shoot that I couldn’t choose another story. The way that I decided to represent this story through a joiner in my image was by creating a joiner that shows the unity the country has shown over this attack and how it has come together to forget the hate and bring back the love. After I had decided these different aspects I then completed my plan by talking about the different equipment I would use for this project and also how I would use it. I then spoke about how I would print my images and how I would present them. I then went onto shooting and editing my two final images. I have included the contact sheets from my final shoot below.

After I had shot and edited all of my images I then had my final two pieces. I have included an analysis of my final two images where I have discussed the meaning behind my images, the equipment that I have used, how it is different to what I planned and also which experimental shoot I have used as inspiration for that image.

This image is the first of my final pieces that I completed. Within this image I completed and edited a total of nine image which I then pieced together in photoshop. For this image what I really wanted to do was represent the different opinions within the General Election. I felt that there are so many opinions included in this election all of which have there similarities and all of which have their differences. I feel that amongst all of these opinions people sometimes forget that its not the different opinions or the leaders that matter its just the parties themselves that you have to focus on when you come to vote. To create this joiner what I did was set up the studio by getting a table and placing it underneath a white background, the reason that I did this was to make all of my image neutral and I think that if I used a black background then when I changed the colour of the image to black and white with a black background then it would have looked quite dark and I think the white helped to brighten the image a lot when it came to changing my images to black and white. I then put a soft box on either side of the white background and the reason that I chose to do this was because in a previous shoot I done this along with a white background and I found the lighting to be really clear and soft and I think that when I placed my subjects on the background the lighting looked really good and I was very happy with it. I had also planned to do this when writing my shoot plan so I was trying my best to stick to what I had planned to do. Before I started taking any of my images I took some test shots with the lighting to see how it was looking through the camera and the reason that I decided to do this was to make sure that I was completely happy with the lighting before I started taking my images as I didn’t want to do my whole shoot and then not be happy with the lighting when I looked back at all of my images. Examples of this can be found on my contact sheet. I then went onto shooting my images and there was two ways that I had in mind of how I wanted to set my work up. The first way that I wanted to do this was by putting all of the party logos in the middle of the image and then putting the party leaders around the outside of the image. I had tested a few times doing this and I was very happy with the way that the shots were looking and but I still had one other way that I wanted to try before I made anything final and started editing my final images. The other way which I wanted to test shooting my image was by taking a picture of each of the party leaders an then surround that image with the different party logos. The reason that I wanted to do this was to show and represent that different parties by highlight its logo along with the leader. The purpose behind the image was to show how important the party itself is other than just the leader, during my research into this story and also watching the news myself I discovered that a lot of people care a lot more about the different party leaders other than the party itself. I felt that in some ways this was quite strange and it shouldn’t be the one key thing that people think about and should be worrying about as some people think that you should care more about the party other than just the leader, other than just the setup of this image I decided to edit each part of it in a way that represented how important the party was compared to the leader. To edit this image I used the color reverse technique that I had researched into and also done an experimental shoot on. I found this technique really good to use and I feel that it brought a technical and photo shop aspect to my work rather than just having a plain picture taken in the studio with no editing to it. During my shoot I tried to take my images from different angles in order to get everything in shot but I had originally planned to use a tripod but I decided to not use one as I had a lot more control of the camera and I felt that I managed to get a lot better shots without a tripod rather than with it. The only problem with not using a tripod in my images is that I had to try a lot of different times to try and get my images straight, you can see this from my contact sheet that I tried a few times in order to get my shot straight and perfect. Once I had taken all of the images for this part of my shoot I went through all of my images and I still found it quite difficult to choose which one of my images I wanted to use for my final piece, however I still knew that I wanted to use color reverse so I was still trying to work out what to do with all of the different images once I had edited them. I feel that this is one of the main challenges that I faced when it came to editing my work and it was definitely something that I should have taken into consideration either before or during my shoot. However once I had edited my images I decided how I would put them all together, I made a blank page on photo shop and decided to put them all together in this one image, however because I had only focused on six parties for this shoot and because of the size of the page that I was using I had a gap at the bottom of the images. I thought about stretching my images in order to fill the gap but I had already made them quite big anyway and I feel that if I had stretched it even more the proportions of the images wouldn’t have looked right so I felt there was something else that I needed to add in order to make the image better. After thinking about what I could add I finally decided that I could use the images for this shoot that I had originally planned to use which were the ones that I shot at the very start of the shoot in the first style that I decided to shoot my images in, I edited these images in a similar way to my other images so that it would fit in with the rest and the three that I added in at the bottom fitted really well and I am very happy with the way that it turned out in the end. When it came to editing my images I already knew the steps that I needed to take in order to make my images the way that they are now and to show this process for my evaluation I took screenshots throughout my edit to show the different steps that I took. I found the edit really easy to do as I had done the technique in other shoots before and I had also practiced it in an experimental shoot so I felt very confident when it came to my edit. The technique that I used for this shoot was colour reverse as I have already spoken about and the reason that I chose to use this was from an experimental shoot and research that I did prior to this shoot, the artist that I researched was Nico Gooden. The reason that I researched this artist was because I really enjoyed looking at his different pieces of work and I also liked the way that he was using the chosen technique. I used the technique in this image in the same way that he used it in his work, in his work he use the technique to highlight things that he thought were key int he images and I used this same strategy in my final edited images. The materials that I used for this shoot came from the internet, I had found images of the things that I needed to use for this shoot and printed them off and cut them out, then I went on to using them for my shoot. I was going to use actually newspaper cutouts but it was hard to find all of the materials that I needed for all of the different things that I wanted to shoot so I decided to use things from the internet instead. However I felt very happy using these as I had used them in my experimental shoots so I knew how to use them and also which ones I could use also. Overall, I am very happy with the way that this image turned out and I am very pleased with what I have managed to create from the different experiments and research that I have completed. Before I shot my images I wasn’t very confident that I was going to get a good result however throughout the shoot my confidence grew and I was very happy with the final outcome. If I was to recreate this image again I would try harder to find different materials for this shoot, for example I would liked to have tried to find pieces and pictures from newspapers that I could use rather than just pictures from the internet.

Here is the second image that I created for my final major project.

This is the second final image that I completed for my final major project. Within this image I have got a total of 6 images which I have taken and divided up in photo shop to create my grid style joiner. The meaning behind this image is to show the love and unity shown by Manchester and the rest of the UK . The reason that I chose to focus on this news story and also create this joiner is because when I was planning my shoot and organising which news stories I would use for my final pieces this news story was all over the news and I was really moved and inspired by the love and unity showed by the U.K especially Manchester after the devastating terror attacks. When it came to planning what I would include in my joiner it was clear that I needed to think about how I would create it and create it in a way that wouldn’t offend anyone and that would still be respectful and show the message that I wanted to put across. When I was looking through the different news stories and articles related to this there was one ket message that stood out to me and the was ‘Love always win’s’, because I was so inspired by this quote I wanted to use it as inspiration for my image and I feel that the image that I have created really helped me to show this message. I think that it was very helpful using a quote for inspiration for my work as it gave me a starting point and also helped me to think about what to include in my image. The one key thing that stood out to me in this story that showed unity of theca country was the ‘One Love Manchester Concert’ this concert happened a few days before I did my shoot and I knew that i had to include this into it as the reason that it was organised was to show that love conquers hate and that ‘Love Always Wins’. Originally I had planned to include pictures of the people who were killed in the terror attack along with the picture from the one love manchester concert, however when I was editing my images I was trying to find a way to add them in but I couldn’t find a way to add them in but I made sure to show this in my contact sheet by still including the screen shots of how I tried to add these images in. I feel that my image would still have looked okay with the pictures of the victims in it but because there were so many pictures to put in and I also wanted all of my squares and pieces to be equal it was hard to try and find a way to fit it all in without changing the whole entire image. However when I was editing my image I still had a gap at the end of the image and I didn’t really want to crop my image because I didn’t want to reduce the size as I felt that it would have looked very stretched when I printed it. I thought about the different things that I could add into it to fill the gap and I finally decided to add in some of the pictures of the flowers that were laid in Manchester City Centre for all of the people that were hurt and affected by this attack, I also added in the logo that was made for this attack which is represented using a unity sign and an Ariana Grande Logo. When it came to shooting this image there wasn’t much shooting involved it was just mainly editing, however there was some actual shooting involved as I decided to print the main image off that I used in the final piece instead of taking it straight from the internet as I felt that the quality wouldn’t have been as good when I came to edit it, however when I printed the image out I felt that the quality wasn’t very good after the way that it has been printed so I used the image straight from the internet and as I went through and was editing the image I felt that the quality was quite good. I was very concerned about how long it would take me to edit this image because in a previous experimental shoot that I had done, I made something quite similar to this and it had taken me quite a long time to edit and I thought it would be the same this time around. Because I knew all of the steps that I needed to take for this edit I was very confident with the process that I had to take for this edit. When I started the edit I had to put the image into photoshop and also open a blank page for me to put my images into. I have shown the process of this in my contact sheets by taking screen shots of my steps. I then changed the size of my images and made sure that I could equally divide it up to get even squares. The reason that I did this is because i wanted all of my work to be equal and I wanted to have an even grid effect. I then went onto cropping each of the square piece by piece to and I also had the aid of the ruler tool to make sure all of my pieces were equal, when I had dragged them onto the new piece of paper in the second tab I was required to re size them as they came up quite small. To make sure they were all the same size I overlaid one on the other and used the pink guide lines that appear on photoshop when pieces of your image become equal. I found these lines really helpful as they helped me to make sure that all the pieces of my image were equal. I then used the pink guide lines to measure out the distance between each image and these helped me to make sure there was an equal distance and height between each image. Overall the edit didn’t take me that long but I am very happy with the way it went. I have included screenshots of the different steps that I took on photoshop during this edit and I then included this into my contact sheet. As you can see from the final piece that I have created there are two pieces of the joiner that I have swapped. The reason that I have done this relates to my research. During my research I looked at that enjoiner work form David Hockney and in one of his pieces he created a joiner in a similar style to this and swapped a few of the pieces around. To show that I understood his work and took influence from my research I decided to include this into my image, I decided to only do one swap in my images because I still wanted the image to be clear and I didn’t want to make it very complicated. Also in his image that I looked at I found that there were different pieces around the outside of the image and i made sure to include this in my image and the way that I did this way by adding in the extra images of the flowers and also the logo. Overall, I am very happy with the way that this image came out and I am very happy with the final result that I got. I feel that I managed to get across the message that I had originally planned to and also successfully added in a joiner technique to this. Compared to my other image that I created I feel that they are very different in what they represent, I feel that one represents very controversial topics which is the election image and shows the political side to the news and the other shows a positive side to the news and almost like a bright light amongst the darkness of politics. I am very confident about my final image and I feel that people will be very happy with it when they see it. If I had to redo this image again I would try in different ways to create styles of joiners. The way that I would do this would be by using a variety of different materials to see what kind of results that I could create when using something different.

Once I had taken all of my images and they were all edited and completed I then had to think about how I could present my images. I already knew that there was going to be an exhibition for my images as there was last year so I had to find a way to get my images printed. After looking at a variety of different places that I could get my pictures printed I decided to go with boots. The reason that I chose boots is because I had pictures printed there before and I was really happy with the quality of them. I also chose boots because of the sizes that they offered, they offered a wide range of sizes that suited me and the size of my images. They also only took half an hour to print which suited me really well. I got my pictures printed on the same day that they had been finished to make sure I had time after them being printed to change anything if I needed to. Luckily there was nothing that I needed to change and I was really happy with the way my images were printed. When it came to the sizes of the images there sizes that they offered went by inches and luckily on the machine that I used I was able to see the different ways my images could be printed according to the different sizes. For my politics image I decided to get this printed in A2 which in there sizes is 20×30 at first I thought that this would stretch the image and it would make it really big but once it had been printed I was really happy with it. The reason that I decided to get it printed in this size was because when I went the size down from this the edge was slightly cut off so I needed it a bit bigger. For my second image I went one size down as I didn’t want to stretch it as I wanted the proportions to be right. Overall this was the only real big cost in this project. I am also very happy with the way my images came out and would definitely use boots again for these types of prints. During this project I completed a exhibition case study where I looked at the different ways that I could present my images, I was really happy that I did this as it gave me options for the exhibition and at the end of it I decided to go with a mounted picture on the board similar to the exhibition that I did last year. I also completed a small blurb to go alongside my images. The reason that I chose to do this was because it would explain to the audience about my images and my project if they didn’t understand anything.

Overall, I am very happy with the way that this project went and I feel that this is one of my favourite projects that I have completed over this two year course. The reason that I think this is because I have had a lot of fun during this project creating my final pieces, I think this is because I am combining all of my skills together to create something that would represent my two years at college, even though this was a challenge for me I really enjoyed doing it. There were some parts of the project that I found quite challenging and stressful but I think this is just because of the time constrains that went along with the project but eventually I managed to get over this. I think the most important part though is that i am very with the way my work has come out and I feel very confident with the way that my images will be presented at the final exhibition. If I had to complete this project again I would definitely try and do something different and choose something that I would enjoy a bit more, even though I really enjoyed this project and creating my joiners I feel that there are other aspects of photography like makeup and portraiture that I would have enjoyed a bit more than joiners.

Before I complete my Shoot for my final major project I have to complete a plan for this Shoot. The pan that I create will help and guide me to achieve the results that I want. Whilst planning my Shoot and writing out the different steps and stages of my Shoot I have to also take into consideration my research that I have done throughout this project and also all of the experimental shoots that I have completed and evaluated too.

Firstly, my research, I think that the research that I have completed for this project has really helped me to learn a lot more about my idea and has also helped me to add and develop things in my idea further because if the different elements that I have identified throughout the research. I feel that adding these into my Shoot plans and also using them in my shoots has shown my understanding of the work of different photographers and also of the information that I have researched based on my news stories.

I think that mainly my research has helped me in my shoot plans as it has helped me to come up with different ideas for them and has also helped me to conduct them too as I have been able to know more about the element that I have been focusing on. Knowing more about the element I have been focusing on has definitely helped me within my shoots as I always felt a lot more confident about what I was doing and not at any point did I feel that I didn’t know what I was doing or that I needed to go back to my work to see how I could complete something so overall it definitely boosted my confidence which I thought was good.

My research also helped me when it came to planning my Shoots. Before I started to plan my shoots I was very unsure of what I wanted to do and I didn’t have many different ideas that I could use for my shoots as I knew that I had eight to plan in total. However after doing my research both in and out of my Shoot plans I gradually got to eight ideas and then after doing all of this research I managed to complete eight Shoot plans that would effectively help me in my final project.

Overall I think that it was really good that I completed all of my research both in and out of my Shoot plans as throughout my work I can definitely tell that it has really helped me throughout the different aspects of my work. The reason that I think this is because of what I have managed to achieve from doing my research, without my research I don’t think that my project would be at the stage it is currently as a lot of my ideas and practical work outcomes have come out the way they are as a result of my research.

Next, my experimental shoots, in total for this project I completed eight experimental shoots. These shoots were four conceptual and four technical shoots. These shoots really helped me to develop my idea and I think that if I didn’t complete them then I wouldn’t feel as confident as I am to complete my final shoot. Throughout doing all of my different shoots I was always thinking of different ways that I could change and develop my ideas further because of the shoots that I was completing.

In terms of my conceptual shoots I found these really helpful as when I was doing them and evaluating I was always finding different ways that I could develop my ideas and my stories that I was using throughout all of the shoots that I was doing. I think that my technical shoots also helped me within this project also as it meant that I could identify and determine which technical aspects worked well for me and which I could use for my final pieces. I think that without my technical shoots I wouldn’t really have many ideas that I could use for my work and for my final pieces, I think that doing these shoots have made my work a lot technically stronger and I feel more confident about the set up of my work and the editing of my images now compared to before I started my shoots and when I was in the planning stage I felt a lot less confident and didn’t really know what to do.

Overall I feel that my experimental shoots have really helped me. I can certainly tell that from the work that I have completed within my experimental shoots my work is a lot stronger now than it was at the start of the project. I think that if I didn’t complete any experimental shoots in this project then my work wouldn’t be at the stage that it is now. I feel that my work has significantly improved by my experimental shoots.

For my final Shoot I would like to complete a total of 2 final images to display for my exhibition. These two images will be one photo shop based image and one image that I took my self and then maybe edit this on Photoshop. These images will include joiners that are based on news stories. Within these joiners I hope to represent a scenario or a situation within a news story. To do this I hope to choose a news story that will help me to portray a scenario that the audience with understand and clearly be able to see within the joiner. Throughout my experimental shoots, mainly my conceptual shoots I used a lot of different news stories and did different joiners for them. Doing this means that I can look back at my work and find what I think looks good out of all of my images and identify which news story I can use, not only can I do this but I can also look is what is currently in the news and choose something from this, this is what I did when I was planning my experimental shoots.

The news stories that I have chosen to use for this project are The General Election and also Terrorism. Overall the reason that I have chosen to use for these two news stories is because I used them in my experimental shoots and I really enjoyed working on them. I also think that currently in the news they are very highly covered and there is a lot of different activity happening around these news stories so I feel that there is a lot of potential for me to use within these stories.

The reason that I chose the general election is because of how interesting that I find it. I think that this news story is really interesting and because there is currently a lot of coverage on it in the news I think that there is a wide variety of things that I could focus on that could make a really effective and understandable joiner. During my experimental shoots I used this story to create a joiner and I found it really effective, I think that this really helped me to understand the story more and from this I gained a few different ideas about this that I can now use for this Shoot. In terms of presentation I think that this joiner would look better if it was the one that I shot myself rather than the one on Photoshop, the reason that I think this is because as the general election is happening within days there is a lot of coverage on it in the news papers and also in magazines that are widely available to me. Because of this I think that I can use all of these materials to create an effective joiner. For this joiner I would like to create something that focuses on all of the different parties and there opinions. I would also like to include different news headlines that focus on the different parties. I think that it would also look good if I did something similar to what I did in one of my experimental shoots. What I would like to do is take all of my images and put my main final one into black and white and then highlight the different things in the images that are important. The way that I would do this is by putting the corresponding things back into their original colour. The reason that I want to do this is because I did something like this for one of my experimental shoots and I found it very effective, in this experimental Shoot I was able to show a variety of different opinions and show that they are the min and key thing amongst everything else. I hope to do the same thing within this Shoot, the way that I will do this is by showing a picture of the party leader, the party logo and also some news headlines relating to this, the key thing in this image that I will change back to its original colour will be the part logo. The reason that I have chosen to do this is because amongst everything in a general election and within the different parties, the only thing that matters is the party itself and what it stands for, nothing else like the leader and also what they bring up in the news. I think that this is the main thing that should be highlighted and I think this will be clear for the audience to understand. I think that this image will look really good when shot in the studio as in my similar experimental Shoot I shot my images in the studio and I found the images looked really good and I managed to get some really effective results. The equipment that I will need to use for this Shoot will be;

Canon 1200D with 18-55mm lens- The reason that I am using this for my Shoot is to Shoot my images. I have used this camera in my previous shoots and I have achieved really good results using this camera and I also feel very confident using it.

16GB San Disk Memory Card- The reason that I am using this for my Shoot is because I have to use this alongside my camera in order to store my images. I have chosen to use a San disk 16GB card because if feel that 16GB is an efficient size for me to take all of the images that I want, I have also used san disk memory cards in the past and I have found them really helpful so I decided to use them again this time around.

Tripod- The reason that I have chosen to use this in my Shoot is to help support and move my camera whilst taking my images. The reason that I have chosen to use a tripod and not having the camera in my hands is because I feel that my camera will be a lot steadier on a tripod and I can avoid things like camera shake. In my previous experimental shoots I have managed to get really effective and good results using a tripod so I feel that it will be good to use again in my final Shoot.

A Table- The reason that I have chosen to use a table in my Shoot is because it will help me to have a flat surface for my material to lie on. I think that if I didn’t have a table then my material wouldn’t be well supported and my results may not come out as well as I would have hoped. When I have done previous joiner shoots I have also used a table within my Shoot and I really liked my results from this.

White Backdrop-The reason that I have chosen to use a white background in my Shoot is because I am going to use it along side my table by covering the table with the white backdrop in order to completely cover it. The reason that I want to cover my table is so that I will have a completely neutral backdrop for my joiner material to go on.

Two Soft Box Lights- The reason that I am choosing to use two soft box lights for my final Shoot is to add light into my images and brighten up the white backdrop I am using. In one of my previous experimental shoots that I did I used soft box lights with a white backdrop and it gave me quite good results that I was very happy with so I think it is good that I am using this again as it shows that I have learnt from my experimental shoots.

Photoshop- The reason that I have chosen to use photo shop as part of my Shoot is purely for after I have taken my images. After I have taken my images I will need to use photo shop to edit my images and use the technique that I have planned to use. In my previous experimental Shoot I used Photoshop to edit my images and I have done the same in different shoots outside of this project so I feel very confident using it.

The reason that I have chose to use terrorism as a news story in my final shoot is because I feel that there is a lot of coverage of the subject in the news currently, recently there was an attack that happened in Manchester at a pop concert which killed 22 people in total and left hundreds in hospital with critical injuries. In the news they identified this story to be one of the worst terror attacks to happen in Britain since the London 7/7 bombings. Since the attacks have happened there has been a lot of unity and love in the country and the people involved in the attack and all of their families and friends have come together to show that love always wins. This is something that I feel is very iconic about this news story and it is something that I want to represent in my joiner for this news story. For this joiner I want to send out this message that ‘Love Always Wins’, the reason that I want to show this message is because it is how the story is being covered currently and I want to keep the positivity up about this story. To be able to represent this story I will be using pictures of all of the victims who were killed in this attack. The reason that I will be including these pictures in my joiner is because these people who were tragically killed in this attack are one of the main reasons that the country has become so united over this attack and they are the people that have been the main focus after this attack happened. The way that I will set this out will be by using the grid style effect that I have previously studied in my joiner research and in my different format experimental shoot, I think that this will clearly show al of the different people that were killed and I think using any other style of joiner will not clearly show any of their faces and they could end up looking quite muddled up and not very clear to both me who has to edit the images and also to the audience who will be viewing the image. I will then be including some iconic images of the way that the country has paid respect for these victims, I will be including pictures of the One Love Manchester Concert, which was organised and took place in memory of all of the people killed, I will also be including a picture of the flowers and tributes that were laid in Manchester City Centre in memory of the victims. Thousands of people laid out flowers and balloons to remember the 22 people who died in this attack. The way that I will be setting out this part of my work will be using the grid affect again but putting the images a lot closer together so that they look a lot more clear, The first joiner that I made with the victims will go around the other two that I am making. The reason that I chose to use a grid effect for my images I because I used this grid effect in my Photoshop experimental shoot and I really like the results that I got from my images and also the way that they turned out. I feel that this was very effective and I managed to put get a good result that I was happy with. Whilst researching images for this shoot I identified in one of the images that two of the pieces of the joiner have been swapped and I also included this in my experimental shoot piece, I will also include this in my final piece for this project. The way that I will be shooting these images will be by taking individual pictures of the all of the victims as a lot of the pictures on the internet have all of the people together in one image and they also include lots of different things in them. I will then piece them together in Photoshop. I also will be shooting pictures of the two scenes that show the countries unity of this attack; I will be shooting these images and then dividing them up on Photoshop. The reason that I have chosen to use Photoshop for this image and not create my joiner and then shoot it is because in my work I wanted to show a variety of both my Photoshop skills and also my studio shooting skills and I feel that this subject and the image that I want to create will be better suited to Photoshop as I want to create a more complex joiner. The reason that I want to shoot my images for this joiner and not use pictures straight from the internet is because I will be able to get my own angles on my work and experiment different ways of shooting that image. Also a lot of images from the internet aren’t very high quality and because I will be putting them into my joiner and printing them to A3 I want them to be very high quality so that I get a good quality print. Therefore I will be printing my images from the Internet shooting them in raw on my camera. For this joiner I will create a contact sheet of the images that I take in the studio, I will also take screen shots of the steps that I take during my process on Photoshop and also include this into my final contact sheet. The equipment that I will be using for this part of my shoot it the same equipment that I will be using for my other part of the shoot. I will be using all of my equipment for the same reasons as before.

Once my shoot is completed and all of my images are edited I will be merging all of my contact sheets together and including my final pieces. Once I have all of this work put together I will be evaluating all of my work. As well as evaluating my final images I will also be evaluating all of my work from this unit as a whole. Some of the things that I will be including in my evaluation will be, how I think my shoot went, what I could do to improve my shoot next time around, the techniques and process that I used within the studio and also Photoshop. I will also be talking about my research and how I used this as influence for my project and also how my experimental shoots have helped me throughout my work.

I think that my final shoot will challenge me, the reason that I think this is because I have got to combine all of my knowledge and skills together from the entirety of this project to create my final pieces, where as in my experimental shoots I was creating rough ideas and images that would help me towards this shoot so in this shoot I have to step up my game a lot more. I also think that a challenge for me will be to try and get my images perfect because they are my final ones. I will be working them a lot more to try and make them perfect ready for printing.

For this shoot I will be combining all of my previous research and experimental shoots together for my final pieces. All of the skills I have learnt and the information that I have got from my other pieces of research and my shoots I will be trying my hardest to include all of this into my final shoot in order to get the best results that I can get.

For my eighth experimental shoot I planned and shot a conceptual shoot. This experimental shoot will go along side all of my other seven experimental shoots to make a total of eight experimental shoots. The reason that I am doing this for my final major project is because it will help me to develop my idea and my work further in order to improve it. I am also completing these shoots to see if there is anything that I need to change something’s or if there is anything that I need to do differently. Doing these experimental shoots will not only help me to develop the concept of my idea but they will also help me to technically develop my idea however this shoot in this shoot I am aiming to try and conceptually develop my idea which I think is really important. There are some conceptual aspects of my project that I need to focus on along with technical elements. When it comes down to my experimental shoots I think that technical shoots are very easy to do as a lot of the technical skills that I have used in my previous shoots, I have already used before in photography, however when it comes to conceptual shoots I think you can develop a lot more because you are focusing on new and different ideas to develop your idea. I hope that all of my shoots will help me in one way or another and from my plans, I think I have managed to effectively push my self and plan good and different ideas that will effectively help me to get good results in my final shoot. When planning these experimental shoots I also had to take into consideration my other shoots, which were my technical shoots and the ideas that I had researched and planned for these shoots. In these shoot plans I tried to incorporate research and also other stuff like my general knowledge and information from websites and also artist profiles, along with this I also tried as much as I could to make all of my ideas different and also add some variety into my work, the reason that I wanted to do this was so that all of my work didn’t look the same and that I could use my experiments to there full advantage by using different ideas and techniques to help with my work. I think that my research helped me to do this whether I was researching a technique, an news story or an artist as it really gave the shoot plan some variety and made each of them different because of the variety in research. I think that in my conceptual shoots it is definitely important to focus on the story as this is what the shoot is all about, but I also have to take into consideration the technical aspects that go along side this as because a lot of my shoots that I have planned are taking place in the studio there are a lot of different technical aspects that I have to take into consideration.

For this experimental shoot I have decided to focus on another news story. I think that when it comes to joiners initially I found it very hard to plan a variety of different ideas for my different conceptual shoots. However when I decided on my subject for my joiners I found it a lot easier to decide on my different concepts and ideas for my conceptual shoots. For my different conceptual shoots I decided on focusing on different news subjects and not specific stories, the reason that I didn’t want to us specific news stories is because I felt that it would take away the variety from my choice when it came to choosing a story for my final shoot. The different subject that I chose for my shoots I tried to briefly touch on a story related to them so I could clearly show what subject I chose to use but some times in my different shoots I touched on a wider variety of stories and tried to bring them all together in one image. For this shoot the subject that I chose to use was Terrorism. The reason that I chose this news subject is because I think that there are so many stories related to it and currently in the news there are lots of stories related to this and it is very highly covered in the news. I also think that there are so many different ways that you can approach this subject in terms of what is involved in them. For this shoot I wanted to focus on the variety of different headlines that have been produced for this subject. I think there are a variety of different news headlines that cover this news subject and it is good to show all of these in one joiner because it shows the variety of the subject and how minor it can be but also how severe these stories can become. The way that I wanted to set this joiner up was in a collage style form but I still wanted to make it clear about the different news stories involved and I still wanted to make them all visible to the audience, I think that if I didn’t do this then my joiner wouldn’t make a lot of sense and the different news stories that I was using wouldn’t the clear enough to the audience which is something that I didn’t want to do or have in my work. Before I had done this shoot I had already done a technical shoot where I experimented with the different ways that I can set up joiners without Photoshop and I found this really helpful as I already knew about the different ways that I could set up my work and I didn’t spend to much time trying to set my work up in different ways, when planning this shoot I also had a rough idea of how I wanted to set out my work as well so I also took this into consideration when I was setting up my work and organizing my different bits of material that I was using. I feel that in this shoot using headlines rather than using a specific story really helped me to show variety in my work and I think that this is an ideal thing to do as in my other shoots I had picked out specific stories rather than showing an overview of the whole subject. I think this shoot has showed me that I don’t need to use a specific story in my work; I can use an overview of something and still represent that subject in a good way that is clear to the audience. Much like my other shoots I have tried hard to include enough shots in this shoot that will fill a contact sheet. Contact Sheet is attached.

Like my American election shoot I took pictures throughout the shoot to show my set up of my images. I did this to show the audience how I set up my work and also in case I go back to this work in the future and want to know how to set up a certain shot. I also did this so that I could get a variety of different shots that would also show the different news headlines on there own and along with others, I found this very helpful and I think that it really contributed to my work and I found it effective.

This shoot that I did took place in the classroom and not in the studio. The reason that I chose to do it in the classroom, as I just wanted a white background for my images and the tables in the classroom that I used allowed me to have this. I also chose not to do this in the studio, as I didn’t need to use any lighting in my images, as I didn’t think that I needed to use any. I also thought that I didn’t need to use any backdrops because I had the white tables in the classroom, I think that if I used the white backdrop in the studio it wouldn’t have made much of a difference because I used the white tables. For this shoot I chose not to use a tripod because I wasn’t in the studio anyway so I didn’t think that I would need it. I also felt that if I didn’t use a tripod then I would have been able to get a wider variety of angles in my images, which I think I managed to achieve in my images. I think that I achieved this because I managed to get the flat lay style images that I wanted when I was planning my images and I am very happy that I managed to get these shots without the use of a tripod.

I feel that my shoot went very well, I think that the images that I got from this shoot were very good and will really help me for this project and I can use them effectively towards my final piece, by using them as inspiration and as influence for the way I lay out, set up and shoot my final images. However with a lot of my shoots I have found some things that I can improve on and I think that it is good to find things like this as it shows you have analyzed your work well and that you have identified flaws in your work and these flaws can help you to improve not only in this shoot but also in my other shoots that I do for this project. Something that I would improve in this shoot if I had to complete it again would be by using different news headlines and shooting them in different ways to maybe try and explain something or set up a certain scenario. Other than this I think that my shoot went really well and I am very happy with the final images that I got.

For this piece of work in particular I focused more on my research into my subject rather than inspiration from an artist. The reason that I chose to do this was because I felt that it would help me to identify something that I could shoot in my images. I looked further into the subject that I had chosen and I explained the different ways that that it is covered in the news and what the subject involves. I think that this research was very helpful for me and I think that t really helped me towards my shoot and also in my general knowledge of this subject. This research that I have completed will also help me in my other shoots that I do. For example if I was to do a shoot as part of another project which involves this subject then I will already have some form of research on it. Also if I choose to use this one for my final shoot then I will have some research for it.

When I was doing my shoot I had a rough idea in my mind of how I wanted to set up my work but I had nothing set in stone, however there were only a certain amount of things that I could do with the materials that I had. I tried to experiment with a few different ways of setting up, as I hadn’t made a final decision. This was the same in a few of my other shoots as well and the reason that I have done this is because it gives me the ability to change my mind when I want to and change the things that I am going to do prior to the shoot. Examples of this can be found on my contact sheet.

I felt that this shoot was quite challenging for me, the reason I thought this is because I had only shot with joiners a few times previous to this so I was still working on my skills with joiners and finding out the different ways to set them up and how I could actually show my stories through them. Also I feel that working with different news stories and subjects at different times means that you are challenging yourself each time because you are trying out different stories and you have to set them up in different ways so that they make sense. I found it quite difficult at first to construct my work and whilst doing it I was breaking it down in my mind and analyzing it also to see if it made sense to me as I knew that if it made some sense to me then it would make some sense to the audience I think this is a really important thing to consider when shooting especially I your experiments as your able to identify in your shoots whether you think the audience is able to understand your idea or not, you can then put it into practice in your final shoot and this means that you are able to get it right in both your experiments and also your final shoot.

Compared to my other conceptual shoots that I have done I feel that there are something things that made them similar and some things that showed the difference between them. A prime example of how I think that they are the same is because I am focusing on news stories and news stories are always making an appearance in my conceptual shoots. The reasons for this is because this is want I to focus on in my joiners for my final shoot and I have had to experiment with a variety of different ones. A prime example of how my work is difference is that in each of my news stories I have had something different each time to represent. For example in my previous shoots I have worked on news topics that are very political and involve a lot of debating. I think that this news story is very different and the way that I have shot this news topic also is very different to how I have set out my work before.

For my seventh experimental shoot I planned and shot a technical shoot for my final major project. This experimental shoot will go along side all of my other seven experimental shoots to make a total of eight experimental shoots. The reason that I am doing this for my final major project is because it will help me to develop my idea and my work further in order to make it better and also to see that if in my final shoot, I need to change something’s or if there is anything that I need to do differently. Doing these experimental shoots will not only help me to develop the concept of my idea but they will also help me to technically develop my idea and this is what this shoot is aiming to do. There are some technical aspects that I need to focus on along with conceptual elements. Some of these technical aspects I have never focused on before during my time in photography but some of them I have so these shoots will also help me to learn new technical skills and develop others that I have used and learnt previously. I hope that all of my shoots will help me in one way or another and from my plans I think that these will be able to help me in some way. When planning these experimental shoots I also had to take into consideration my other shoots, which were my conceptual shoots and the ideas that went along with these. In these shoot plans I tried to incorporate research and also other stuff like my general knowledge and information from websites, along with this I also tried as much as I could to make all of my ideas different and also add some variety into my work, the reason that I wanted to do this was so that all of my work didn’t look the same and that I could use my experiments to there full advantage by using different ideas and techniques to help with my work. Not only in my conceptual shoots did I have to focus on the idea and the concepts of my shoots but I also had to do this in my technical shoots as I had to shoot something that had a but of concept to it and that would make sense to not only me but the audience as well.

For this technical shoot I decided to use a technique that I had used in previous and work. This technique is colouring reverse. This technique is where you take an image and put the whole thing into black and white, and then using Photoshop you choose one part of that image that you find significant or a piece of the image that you like and change it back to your original colour. Not only can you change it back to its original colour but you can also use different tools on photo shop to change it to a different colour of your choice. As I was using news stories for my project idea I had to find a way to try and incorporate this and colour change together, the way that I came up with my idea was by looking into different news stories and seeing if there were different ways that I could use this in my work. After I had done this I got to the point where I knew how I could use this and how I could incorporate it into my work. The way that I decided to this was by choosing different news stories that showed a variety of different opinions and that really divide people. At this moment in time there are a lot of different news stories out there that are dividing people and that are causing people to have a variety of different opinions. What I decided to use with these news stories was to create a joiner that would show these two or many different opinions in them this would give me a base for my work and for my images and this gave me the opportunity to then go onto editing my images. When it came to editing my images I had planned to use the joiners that I had made and edit them in photo shop and use the colour reverse technique to highlight the opinions in my images and the joiners that I had created. The reason that I chose to di this was because I really thought that the technique that I had chosen would really show this very well and highlighting something in an image especially something like an opinion would certainly work because sometimes hidden opinions in an image can sometimes be looked past and some people don’t recognise how many different opinions there are in news stories and I decided to use this piece of work to highlight this. The opinions that I chose to highlight within my news story images are the opinions that I thought were key and the ones that I feel should be highlighted.

The way that I decided to set up my work was in joiner form as this is the main technique that I wanted to use for my final major project idea so I knew that I had to use this in all of my experimental shoots. The priority that I had for my shoot was to really show my opinions in order for me to be able to clearly highlight them in my final edited image. I used some basic joiner formats for this piece of work as my main focus was on the editing and technical side of the image, I still however took into consideration that stories that I was using as I still wanted my work to make sense and I felt that if I couldn’t do this then when it came to editing my images it wouldn’t make much sense and what I had planned to do wouldn’t have made much sense and it would have been a waste of a shoot in my eyes. The news stories that I had chosen to use for this shoot were, The General Election, American Election and also Brexit. I think that these news stories in particular show a variety of different opinions and really do divide people when they are in the news and when they are debated, for this reason I think they fitted my idea for the shoot I wanted to do very well. From this I went on to shooting my images and the way that I set these up I really wanted to try and get the opinions across as well as I could. The way that I did this was by using some cutouts from pictures that I had found on the Internet that I felt would really help to express the different opinions that I had chosen to focus on. I then set my images up by using a picture that would show the different opinions and then using an image beside that which would show the person that supported that opinion and that side to the story. For example in my election story piece I chose to use a picture of Jeremy Corbyn and then also Theresa May and then an image of their parties logo as I felt that this showed the two different opinions that are key in this story and also showed the part leaders that represent them and that choose them as their opinion in this debate. Then from this I went onto the American Election and Brexit story where I did something similar for these stories as I did for my first one. I set them up with the two different supporters of the different opinions and then added them in; I had to however alter it slightly for the Brexit story as I just had the title of Brexit in the image along with the two different opinions. I found this a very easy way of doing this and I think that it worked really well. I did alternate them throughout the shoot to try different set ups and ways of laying my work out but I felt that keeping it basic for now was a good thing to do as I had already planned to do something for the set up of joiners and I decided to keep that part of it for that shoot and not try to get a perfect joiner by testing lots of different set ups. I think that this shoot has shown me different ways of using opinions within photography and how to show them through news stories, other than developing my skills with the colour reverse technique. Much like my other shoots I have aimed to get around 30 shots for my work and in this shoot I also aimed for this too, I put these images onto a contact sheet which I have put below,

I then went on to editing my images and I found this and the way that I did this was firstly picking three of my best images, one for each news story and then putting all of these images into black and white, I then changed the key opinions back to there original colours to highlight them. I found this process very easy as I had done it before in previous shoots in the past. I think that this technique really helped me highlight my opinions and I also feel that I sued the technique that I had chosen to its full advantage. I feel that because of this it will really help me in my final shoot if I choose to use this technique. I am still unsure of wither I will use this technique in my final shoot or not but I will decide this once I have taken my images and have seen what they are like. I have included my final three edited images below.

In other shoots that I have done I have included shots throughout my shoot and put them onto my contact sheet to show how I set my work up. In my other shoots I had found this really helpful and I felt this way in this shoot also as it showed me how my work was set up and if I ever wanted to use that shoot again or the images from it then I could use them knowing how I set them up and the different ways that I could set them up. I also made sure to set up my different shots where you could clearly see the different images that I had used and that would also make it easier for me when it came to editing the images so that I could clearly change the colours and they could still be seen within the images.

This shoot was based in the studio and I felt that this was very helpful to me and I benefited from it a lot because I had the opportunity to use everything there like the lights, a tripod and also to have a backdrop to my images. However for this shoot in particular I decided just to use a tripod as I felt this is all that I needed to use. The lights that I used in these images were soft box lights and I think that this enhanced the colors in the images, which therefor made them a lot brighter when I edited my images.

I feel that my shoot went well, I think that the images that I got from this shoot were very good and will really help me for this project and I can use them effectively. However with a lot of my shoots I have found some things that I can improve on and I think that it is good to find things like this as it shows you have analyzed your work well and that you have identified flaws in your work. Something that I would have improved in my work especially in this shoot would be the way that I set up my images; I think that I should have experimented with different ways of doing this.

For this piece of work I manly focused on artist inspiration rather than research into stories, the reason that I chose to do this is because I was doing a technical shoot rather than a conceptual shoot. The artist that I researched and took inspiration from was Nico Gooden, the reason that I chose to do this was because he uses the colure reverse technique and I thought that his work would help me with my shoot. Here is an image that I used from his work that I took inspiration from and I found it very helpful for my shoot.

This image really helped me for artist inspiration as it showed me a really good way of using the technique. The technique is clearly shown in the image and I think that it is a very effective way of using this technique. The artist has taken something key that he has found in this image and highlighted it using this technique. This image gave me a lot of inspiration for my work because of the way he created this particular piece of work.

I felt that this shoot was quite challenging for me, the reason I thought this is because I had only shot with joiners a few times previous to this so I was still working on my skills with joiners and finding out the different ways to set them up and how I could actually show my stories through them. Not only this but I was also working on how I could represent opinions through a joiner and using color reverse in my work, even though I had used this technique before I still found it quite challenging as I was using it in a different context to what I had done before.

Compared to the other technical shoots that I had done I found this one very different to others as I was using a different technique and I was using something that wasn’t involved in any of my other shoots. I think that the only thing that I found similar about these shoots is that I was still using news stories and joiners, which is my main project focus.

For my sixth experimental shoot I completed another conceptual shoot and now going through my project this is my third experimental shoot in the conceptual category. In this project I have planned to do four experimental shoots that will help me to conceptually develop my idea. As this is my third I have one more to complete after this one and this will then mean that all of my conceptual experiments are complete. For my other four experimental shoots I will be completing technical shoots where I will be trying to technically develop my idea further. As I am working with joiners for my final major project I found it quite hard initially to work out what I could do for my conceptual shoots and I thought that a lot of my shoots would look very similar and there would be much variety or difference in my work. However because of the subject that I chose to focus on for this shoot is quite complex and in many different ways has variety, I eventually managed to plan out some conceptual shoots that I feel are different in there own way and initially all of the images that produce from these shoots will look different and hopefully this means that they wont be similar in anyway and not all look the same. Whilst planning these shoots I had to take into consideration my technical shoots also and try not to include anything from these that I would be including my technical experiments as I felt that this would be another factor that could make a lot of my work similar. However there were some technical things that I had to take into consideration for this shoot and also my other conceptual experiments that I hadn’t already planned to do for my technical experiments.

For this experimental shoot I focused on two new stories and chose to represent these through joiners. The two news stories that I chose to focus on where, The General Election and also Brexit. The reason that I chose to focus on these news stories in particular is because they are currently in the news and are always being brought up and debated across not only the news but also the media. I thought that because these news stories were so popular they would be really easy to analyse and create scenarios and I wasn’t wrong I found these news stories really easy to shoot because of the amount of things that have come from and also the amount of coverage they have had in the news. Whilst planning this shoot I decided to do some research into the new stories that I had chosen in order to expand my knowledge and gain so more pointers and facts that I could possibly use for my shoot. I already knew that this research would be very helpful for my when it came to my research as in a previous shoot that I had done I also did some research similar to this and I found it very helpful so I knew that I had to continue doing similar research like this in other shoots. From this research I did find a few different points that I could use and knew that I could possibly create in my shoot, I did decide to go with a couple of these but however I did decide to leave a few of them just in case I decided to go with any of these news stories in my final shoot.

The way that I decided to set up my work was based on other shoots that I had done that were conceptual, I also had to focus on the stories that I was working on and what I was trying to represent. This meant that there were a variety of different ways in which I could present my work. The scenarios that I chose to construct for these joiners in particular I hoped would show the divide in opinion between the two parties for the election story and a difference in opinion of the country for the brexit story. The way that I chose to do this was by gathering some images from the Internet that would show this. For the general election story I wanted to show the difference between the two main party leaders in the running for prime minister, these two people are Theresa May and also Jeremy Corbyn. During my research for this shoot I found out a lot more about there party manifestos and what they wanted to do for the country, doing this research and finding out these things made me realise just how much the are different and how they want different things not only for themselves but also the country. These differences have been portrayed a lot in the media and this is what gave me the idea to show a difference in opinion through a joiner. For this story I decided to have a picture of each leader and then surround them with the different news headlines relating to them and there party and I also used key images that I found that represent them in the election. I had previously done something similar to this in one of my previous experimental shoots but in this shoot I focused on the American General Election, I felt that this worked really well so I thought that as the news story was very similar that I could do something similar for this story. Then in my brexit story I knew that brexit is purely based on opinions and the decision of the public, for this news story I found some headlines and some key images much like I did in my election story and I joined them up to show a difference in opinion. I think that this shoot helped me not only to represent a news story through a joiner but it also helped me to show an opinion through a joiner and it showed me that there were different ways of doing this. In a lot of my experimental shoots I have aimed to get around 30 shots to be able to fill a contact sheet, I have managed to do this and I have put a copy of the contact sheet below.

Like my American election shoot I took pictures throughout the shoot to show my set up of my images. I did this to show the audience how I set up my work and also in case I go back to this work in the future and want to know how to set up a certain shot. I also did this so that I could get a variety of different shots that would also show a difference in opinions but in different ways. I also made sure to set up my shots in a way that would make it clear who’s on opinion is who’s and to make the stories clear to the audience.

This shoot was based in the studio and I felt that this was very helpful to me and I benefited from it a lot because I had the opportunity to use everything there like the lights, a tripod and also to have a backdrop to my images. However for this shoot in particular I decided just to use a tripod as I felt this is all that I needed to use, I think that the lights wouldn’t have added much to the image and I didn’t want to spend ages adjusting them with the camera and making my shots more complicated as the shoot I was doing was conceptual not technical.

I feel that my shoot went well,I think that the images that I got from this shoot were very good and will really help me for this project and I can use them effectively. However with a lot of my shoots I have found some things that I can improve on and I think that it is good to find things like this as it shows you have analysed your work well and that you have identified flaws in your work. Something that I would improve in this shoot if I had to complete it again would be working with a wider variety of news stories, I think that I could look at a lot more different news stories that could show a difference in opinion and try and represent these in a similar way to how I did before in this shoot. Other than this I am really happy with the results that I got and I wouldn’t do anything else at this moment in time to change them.

For this piece of work in particular I mainly focused on my research rather than artist inspiration. In a lot of my other shoots I had looked at an artist that has used joiners and taken inspiration from their work and tried to recreate it, however in this shoot I decided to do it differently and focus more on my research and the messages and meanings behind my news stories rather than focusing on set up. I think that this was a really good thing to do as it really showed that I was more focused on the conceptual side of things and not the technical. I had already done some artist research in my other conceptual shoot plans too so I wanted make sure there was some variety in my shoot plans.

When I was doing my shoot I had a rough idea in my mind of how I wanted to set up my work but I had nothing set in stone, however there were only a certain amount of things that I could do with the materials that I had. I tried to experiment with a few different ways of setting up, as I hadn’t made a final decision. Examples of this can be found on my contact sheet.

I felt that this shoot was quite challenging for me, the reason I thought this is because I had only shot with joiners a few times previous to this so I was still working on my skills with joiners and finding out the different ways to set them up and how I could actually show my stories through them. Not only this but I was also working on how I could represent opinions through a joiner so this to me was another part of a skill that I needed to learn also. I found it quite difficult at first to construct my work and whilst doing it I was breaking it down in my mind and analysing it also to see if it made sense to me as I knew that if it made some sense to me then it would make some sense to the audience.

Compared to my other conceptual shoots that I have done I feel that there are something things that made them similar and some things that showed the difference between them. A prime example of how I think that they are the same is because I am focusing on news stories and news stories are always making an appearance in my conceptual shoots. The reasons for this is because this is want I to focus on in my joiners for my final shoot and I have had to experiment with a variety of different ones. A prime example of how my work is difference is that in each of my news stories I have had something different each time to represent. For example in my first conceptual shoot I was representing something that was a tragedy in the world and showing how the events unfolded. But in my second conceptual shoot I was showing a topic that people were following for a lot longer than the first story and was on-going and changing all the time. I feel that the comparing these shoots shows me what I can do to other shoots in order to make them different.

For my fifth experimental shoot I planned and shot a technical shoot for my final major project. This experimental shoot will go along side all of my other seven experimental shoots to make a total of eight experimental shoots. The reason that I am doing this for my final major project is because it will help me to develop my idea and my work further in order to make it better and also to see that if in my final shoot, I need to change something’s or if there is anything that I need to do differently. Some of these technical aspects I have never focused on before during my time in photography but some of them I have so these shoots will also help me to learn new technical skills and develop others that I have used and learnt previously. I hope that all of my shoots will help me in one way or another and from my plans I think that these will be able to help me in some way towards my final pieces and I think that I have effectively planned each of my shoots including research and artist influence which will all go towards both my final shoot and my final evaluation. When planning these experimental shoots I also had to take into consideration my other shoots, which were my conceptual shoots and the ideas that went along with these. In these shoot plans I tried to incorporate research and also other stuff like my general knowledge and information from websites, along with this I also tried as much as I could to make all of my ideas different and also add some variety into my work. I also included some artist research into my shoot plans and these influence research posts helped me both technically and conceptually as I was able to analyze their images that I had chosen and pick out different aspects from their work that I can then go on to putting these aspects into my work. The reason that I wanted to do this was so that all of my work didn’t look the same and that I could use my experiments to there full advantage by using different ideas and techniques to help with my work and this research can also be put towards my additional artist research which is included in my work. In my technical shoots it was also important that I focused on the subjects of my joiners also as if I just put some material together and it had no context to it, I feel it wouldn’t make sense and what I was trying to do and put across wouldn’t come across as well s I initially thought.

For this experimental shoot I was working on different ways that I could set up joiners using Photoshop, I had already planned and shot a separate shoot that was showing different ways that I could create joiners but in this shoot I was focusing on the ways that I could do this without photo shop and being able to physically do this and then photographing it flat rather than taking a few different images and putting different things in and joining them together in different ways on Photoshop. On this shoot I was thinking of what to use for my shoot and whether I should take some images first or use some images from the internet and then join them together my self on Photoshop, because of the amount of time that it took for me to do one Photoshop experiment I decided that I would just keep it at one and not waste any more time making other ones that I could potentially not be happy with at the end of it. Because of the way that I created mine and the result that I got I was happy to only have one experiment to use for this shoot. The way that I created this joiner was by taking one image from the Internet and dividing it up into a grid style layout and separating each of the different pieces so it would still give off this effect. In my shoot plan I never stated what I would actually use as my subject for my joiner but after looking into different things that I could have used I decided that I would use an image from the internet from the one love Manchester concert which took place in honor of the victims of the Manchester terror attack at the Ariana Grande concert. I decided to use this as this event only happened very recently and I decided that it would be very effective to use this story now and not in another shoot in a few weeks time. I used a basic image of the crowd, which also included the stage, and an act performing, I feel that this image included enough detail for me to separate and re join together for my final piece for this shoot. As I wasn’t actually shooting anything for this shoot I didn’t really know how to present my work, the reason that I felt this is because previously in all of my other experimental shoots I had already put a contact sheet in as I was actually shooting images. However in this shoot I was just readjusting on Photoshop, so I eventually found a way that I could present my work in a contact sheet style way but without shooting images. Throughout my process in Photoshop I went through at very key step of my edit and screen grabbed what I was doing, this showed the process of my work and the different steps that I went through to create my final image. I had already done this in previous shoots too where I took different shots to show the set up of my images and the different formats that I could have that specific image in, so I thought that making a contact sheet in this way would still be just a s effective as shooting lots of different images. My contact sheet for this shoot I have included below.

The way that I wanted to lay this image out was in a grid style format and to create this I also had to include some math and some measuring of the image that I was using in order to get an effective and even result for my work. The way that I made this image was to work out how many different square I could have in my image and for all of the square to be equal, I feel that this is very important because otherwise the whole image would look very distorted if not and it wouldn’t look as even as I wanted it to. I worked out that my image was 70cm by 50 cm and using these measurements I could have an image with 25 squares in total I did however had to round u some of the measurements when looking at the image size to make all of the sides equal. I think that this is really important that I did this because I found it much more effective and therefore easier to make joiner in the way I wanted to as I could split my pieces up into equal numbers rather than having lots of different decimal points and numbers to deal with. I found that the easiest way to separate my images was to equally divide up each of my pieces and crop them in the way that would make them this size, I had this image and went back and forward each time I needed to crop a different piece, I found that this was the most effective way of doing this and looing at my final results I think that I managed to achieve an equally laid out result. I had this laid out in one tab of Photoshop and in the second I had a plain white piece that I was putting the cropped pieces onto, I think that this was the best way to do it and to set out my work as it meant that I was keeping all of my pieces separate from each other and starting to lay them out each time I had cropped them so they were in order and in some order. When I had cropped all of my pieces for my image I then went onto changing the images and putting them together so that they were all equal, doing this on Photoshop made it a lot easier for me as once I placed on image I then went onto moving the others and when it was equal with the first there were some pink lines that showed up around the images and these indicated to me that there were equal gaps in between the images to create the grid effect. Once I had got all of my images equal I then chose two of the pieces and I then swapped them, the reason that I did this is because during my research I researched a picture in a similar style to the image that I created and in this image he had done the same thing and because I was using him as an artist for inspiration, I thought that I should include something like this other than the layout of the image to show that I understand the artists work and I have identified the different aspects of there images effectively.

The research that I did for this shoot was based on David Hockney as in his work he has created joiners that I thought that I could create on photo shop. I talked about the different ways that he laid out his work and also analyzed some of his images to then use as inspiration for my work. I found this research very effective as it gave me the opportunity to get ideas from it and actually complete my shoot confidently. Here is an example of one if the images that I analyzed and also why I found it effective for my work.

This is the image that I used for my research for this shoot, I think that I managed to recreate this image very well and I still managed to include my own story and my own subject rather than using a image similar to the one in the images. My final can be found on my contact sheet.

I feel that this experiment for me went very well and I managed to achieve and good result from it. However I feel that my shoot didn’t go as very much to plan as I expected, the reason that I feel this is because I didn’t manage to get the same amount of results in this shoot as I initially planned. I initially planned in my shoot plan to get three final results from this shoot but because of the time it took to do this shoot and the time it took to edit and join all of my images together I decided to only do one image and not three. The reason that I chose to do this as not only because of time but it as also because I wanted to have one image that I was happy with and that I spent a lot of time on rather than having three rushed images that I weren’t happy with.

I felt that this shoot was quite challenging for me as I hadn’t done lots of work on Photoshop before and prior to my shoot I didn’t feel that I had much experience in doing what I wanted to do. However I managed to work on it and I am still very happy with my results. I think that challenging yourself within a shoot especially a technical one is good as it makes you push yourself further in your work in order to get better results and develop your skills.

Compared to my other technical shoots I felt that this one was a lot different to the others because of the technique that I was focusing on and the process that I used in my images. Previously I had done a lot of work in the studio for my technical shoots but in this shoot I had done all of my work on Photoshop so it was very different to what I had done in previous technical shoots. I think the way that they were similar is that I managed to still incorporate a news story into this, which is the main focus of my work.

For my fourth experimental shoot I completed a second technical shoot. This shoot I planned will help me to technically develop my idea and I hope that this will help me to gain some more technical skills along with developing my idea. For my final major project I have planned to conduct eight experimental shoots in total. Four of these will be conceptual shoots to help me develop my idea in terms of subject and the other four of these shoots will be technical shoots that will help me to develop my idea technically so that I can add technical skills and elements into my final shoot. I tried to make all of shoots very different but sometimes I found this quite difficult because of my subject that I chose and in some ways it can be see as quite similar. For this shoot as I was focusing on a technical element I found it a lot easier to differentiate my ideas as there are lots of different technical things that I can add to this idea and there are different things that I can add to it to make the idea and the images a lot stronger technically. Initially when I was planning my technical experiments I found it hard to think of some different ideas to use for my shoots and I tried again like my conceptual shoots to make them very different from others, otherwise you end up with the same thing over and over again which isn’t what I wanted. However I did a little bit more research into my idea and looked back at my other research and discovered some different technical aspects that I could select for this experimental shoot. I included this research that I did in my shoot plans in order to support my ideas. When it came to planning my technical test shoots I tried to steer away as much as possible from the conceptual side of things as I was already planning to do things like this in my conceptual shoots and wanted to make these technical shoots as different as possible. I tried to plan my shoots in as much detail as I could in order to produce good results and improve my ideas.

For this technical experimental shoot I decided to focus on the background of my images. In a lot of my experimental shoots I found that I was always focusing on construction and trying to plan how my images would look but I never took into consideration that background of my images and whether this would make a difference to the image. Also I was trying to see if there was a way that I could incorporate the story with the colour of the background as during my research I found that a background can affect the mood of an image and because of the different news stories that I am looking at I felt that during the planning stages of my final pieces I should take this into consideration. After I chose this idea I then did some research to support my idea as I had done this with a lot of my other shoot plans so I decided to continue this throughout my other plans. For this shoot I devised a plan based on my knowledge and my research to shoot some different joiners using materials that I have used from previous shoots to test out different backgrounds to see which ones I could use for my final shoots. I thought I would do this rather than experiment with different backgrounds on the day of my shoot as this would potentially waste time or I may have just chose what was there are got on with my shoot. I think it is hard to incorporate a background into something like a joiner because of the way that they are laid out and the way that they are set up, but when doing this shoot I found it quite easy to involve the backgrounds into the images. I think that if I am to use this for my final shoot it will really help to improve my work as I would have thought about something other than the subject, I would have taken into consideration how the image is made and what goes into it to make it a good piece of work.

The backgrounds that I chose to use for this shoot were, Black, White and Blue. The reason that I chose to use these backgrounds is because black and white are the two basic backgrounds that are used a lot in the studio as apposed to colour backgrounds. I decided to include these in my shoot as I thought that because they were basic backgrounds and ones that I have always used during studio shoots then I should use them in this particular experiment to test them out and asses what they would be like a long with my work. I then chose to use a blue background for my third background as I wanted to see what I could create using colour and if there was anything that I could add to my work by using a coloured background. When I did my research for this shoot I looked into moods and how they affect images and this can be done most of the time using coloured backgrounded so this is why I decide to use this particular background for my shoot. I wasn’t really fussed about the joiners that I created for this shoot as I wanted the focus to be purely on the way that I was using my backgrounds and the way that I was shooting the backgrounds rather than the concept of the shoot. For this shoot I used the studio as this gave me full access to a coloured background and it helped me to get a better result rather than using a table in the classroom with a coloured piece of paper behind it, which is what I was actually going to do but then I was given a recommendation to us the studio instead as for this test I would have got a better result which is what I did. I used my DSLR camera for this shoot and I differed from using it on and off of a tripod as there were certain shots where I wanted to have the camera on and off of the tripod. I made sure the take one plain image of the background before adding the joiner material and I did this to make sure that I could see what background I was using at the time and also to see what the background looked like without any material on it. I found this very effective as I could then use this to create photoshop based joiners as I would already have a background shot so this also came in handy for other shoots and also if I edited any of the images in photoshop. Much like my other shoots I tried to get around 30 shots to give me a good full contact sheet and possibly two contact sheets. I have put these contact sheets with my images below.

In this shoot the joiners that I created don’t have any context to them as I wanted to focus purely on the backgrounds in the images. The material that I see was in my previous shoots and I decided to keep the materials that I was using in my previous shoots as it was still something that I could use and I didn’t see any point in getting rid of the materials when they were perfectly fine to use again.

As I was in the studio I was able to use the backgrounds that I wanted to use rather than using a black or white piece of paper behind the images. To set up my shots I pulled the backdrops down to leave quite a big piece of it on the floor and then put a table behind the backdrop to support it. Then because I had a flat surface with the backdrop on it I was able to put my material on top of it and I found this a lot easier as the surface was flat and it meant that I could have my images flat on the table rather than raised in between the backdrop and the floors the results that I got may not have been as good. I had also previously planned to use a light box as one of my backgrounds but I decided against it as I was more focused on colours.

I think that my shoot went quite well and I thought that I got quite good results, however there are some things that I feel that I could do differently next time if I was to do this shoot again. For example I could maybe experiment with different backgrounds and more colours to show different results and also to show a different variety of moods. I also feel that I could make my joiners with more context in order to relate the story and the colour of the background up to show the mood.

For this piece of work I took some inspiration from David Hockney and Christian Marclay. They are both very famous for using and creating joiners in there work so I looked at their work to see what they do with their backgrounds. I found this research helpful as I was able to see which different backgrounds are used and what images they are used with.

This is one of the images that I used for my research and it shows a white background. What I found from this image is that it made the whole image a lot brighter and meant that you could easily see the LP covers.This is another image that I used for my research for this shoot. This image shows a black background and I think that this black background is good because black has very dark and sad connotations linked to it and because of what is happening in the image the colour of the background also links to the mood of the image.

I think that this test was a bit challenging for me but not fully challenging. There are some things that I did find challenging like using the new and different backdrops for my images as i had never used them before but I think that the challenge for me especially whilst evaluating my work was to see how I could change my work and make it different. I did manage to identify some things that I could alter next time around which I think was good as it shows that I was able to evaluate and assess my work effectively. When planning and conducting this shoot I sort of knew that it wasn’t very challenging as it could have been but I have been able to identify this.

As I hd already planned to my idea fully before I started my shoot I was able to refer back to my shoot plans for pointers to help with my shoot and this really helped me as it was like a guide to help construct and improve my work where needed.

I also found my research really helpful throughout the whole process of this shoot as it helped me to decide which backgrounds to use and also how to set up my joiners on them. I also did some research into joiners that use no backgrounds and this helped also support my ideas for this shoot.

When it comes to linking this to other shoots that I have done for this project I think that it is really easy to link them together because I can analyse the images for the mood and the story behind the images, look back at this shoot and make the decision of which background I can use for that image.